Screw-ups

The White House’s new official email provides its readers with a daily dose of news from the Trump administration, from special events, to a “photo of the day”, to a curated selection of media reports.

Written by columnist and humourist Alexandra Petri, the opinion piece — as it is labelled at the top of the article — mocks the Trump administration’s budget.

More fabulous White House staff work. They don’t read beyond the headlines, and probably don’t know that the headlines are not always written by the authors of the articles, and may be misleading even on straight news articles.

Frankly I think the White House and its voters are all low information people, not necessarily stupid, but definitely ignorant. If you get all your ‘news’ from heavily biased sources, you can’t figure out what is going on. Trump still won’t accept that the job is 24/7, otherwise he could go to Florida is his own damn plane and save the taxpayers millions.

These guys are going to sell everything they can to their ‘friends’ for next to nothing and leave it to Democrats to clean up the mess. The purpose and goal of privatizing government services is graft.

Somebody said “doesn’t anybody brief the President?” after one of Donald’s cock-ups. The reality is that all the briefing in the world won’t help if the President doesn’t listen. All Donald Trump watches is Fox News, and all he reads is InfoWars and Breitbart. Anything else, as far as he’s concerned, is “fake news” — including his own CIA etc. briefings.

He is a wingnut’s wingnut and really believes that Fox News are the only people telling the truth.He actually believes all too much of what he spouts and can’t understand why his favorable rating is tanking. If there wasn’t so much potential for disaster I would probably feel sorry for him I’ll save my sympathy for the lives he will ruin.

The insanity seems contagious! Our wingnuts & LNP are pretty much the same.

There was a piece in a local paper listing the reasons why buying the JSF is a really bad idea! One was that it’s avionics & weapon systems is so bad that “It couldn’t hit a bus!” Touting information from military & aerospace experts. You already know about it’s inability to operate in storms. What a piece of junk!

One of the Murdoch owned papers (The Australian) watered that down a bit to “Couldn’t hit a car”. But even they aren’t impressed. 😆

Avionics and weapons systems on the F-35 can be fixed. The core problem with the F-35 — its excess size and weight due to the empty space for a lift fan that doesn’t exist on the USAF and USN version — can’t. It’s inherently a dog as a dogfighter and inherently will never be able to carry the weapons load of its predecessors, the F-16 and F-18, while carrying a fuel load enabling full range. The USMC can live with that because they have top cover from the USN and USAF and will be operating forward-deployed as a ground attack aircraft so will be able to trade off fuel for bombs. The USAF and USN version though are simply dismal.

As I like to mess with people’s minds, especially wingers, when they fly over I say “you’d think for $100 million a plane they could get a decent muffler.” These sucker are really LOUD which sort of negates the concept of stealth. They really are pigs that fly…

You could re-fit the FB-111s or buy FA-18s as a better fit for your mission. It sounds more and more like the Canadians are going to buy more FA-18s rather than wait for F-35s. Two engines better than one over large empty spaces, whether water, sand, or tundra.

Super Hornets are much cheaper than F-35’s, and while they’re lousy dogfighters, no more so than the F-35. Plus they carry a bigger bomb or missile load longer distances than the F-35. The only thing they don’t have is stealth, but the F-35’s stealth features aren’t going to last beyond the end of this decade before any potential adversaries know how to defeat them. Australia needs to give up on the F-35 and concentrating on buying more of the Super Bugs or even on buying F-15’s, which are longer-ranged and thus more suited for Australian conditions. But I’m sure the right people have been bribed to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Of course the F-111 was far better suited for Australia than any of the above, but what’s done is done…

Obviously the most critical decision on the selection of weaponry is who is the enemy and what capabilities do they have. We keep arming to fight first world enemies while all of our recent experience is in asymmetrical warfare. There is a reason the Air Force can’t retire the A-10 – it is too damn useful.

In another step on the road to poverty we shot down a quadcopter drone with a Patriot missile. The Patriot tops a million bucks and the drone probably didn’t cost $1K. A 10-gauge goose gun with a 36-inch barrel would have been a better choice.

The FA-18’s are better than the F22 & F35’s for sure. But for us, the FB-111’s are the best choice. We are a completely self-contained Continent surrounded by ocean. So the only foreign attack is over water. The F-35’s suck @ that big time for many reasons!

We know the FB-111’s very well, were even involved in the design/construction & maintenance in the USA (I have photo’s). They have excellent range & weapon versatility & capacity. They can fly very high & very low (avoiding radar & visual sighting)… etc, etc.

Politicians are ALL (with a very few exceptions) asshole morons with vested interest in their own bank accounts! Nothing else matters to them.

All you need is a manufacturing facility to build replacements and make spare parts. It isn’t new and ‘gee whiz’ so politicians aren’t interested. They want to buy equipment from ‘MalWart’ because it is cheap and has more blue LEDs.

I don’t understand why politicians don’t understand the logic of manufacturing vital defense equipment in country, even if it is under license. It is always a good idea to have the shortest supply lines possible.

Yep. And we used to make our own aircraft. We used to build the Mirage III here.

It should be remembered that the RAAF F-111’s pretty much terrified Nations in the Asia-Pac region and on several occasions helped bring Indonesia & others to their senses. The threat was enough to guarantee East Timor’s independence. To drive the point home, a couple were deployed to East Timor as part of the International Force for East Timor.

I was told that Indonesian defense minister Benny Murdani, told Kim Beazley (AU defense Minister @ that time) that when other Ministers became upset with Australia during Indonesian cabinet meetings, Murdani would say “You do realise the Australians have a bomber that can put a bomb through that window on to the table here in front of us?” which apparently ended the discussion. 🙂 An F-111 was also used to sink the the North Korean ship Pong Su with 2 GBU-10 Paveway II laser-guided bombs.

We also don’t have a replacement for the EW Raven variant.

Something else I haven’t heard mentioned is that the F-35 will also require an increase of about double of our air tankers due to it’s short operation range. Just to ferry an empty F- 35 from Sydney to Perth will require at least 2 refueling’s. The F-111 could make the trip in ferry mode without refueling.

The Aussie F-111C (& later) variant had capabilities the US models didn’t. Such as the capability to launch the Harpoon anti-ship missile, and the Popeye stand-off missile.

The RAAF was not designated FB-111 because it couldn’t carry 2 AGM-69 SRAM nuclear missiles in the weapons bay (mainly because the bay had been reconfigured for Harpoon & Popeye). What wasn’t mentioned was that it could carry 4 AGM-69 SRAM’s on the pylons & had the avionics to do so (arming & launch control computer etc.) It could also carry AIM-7 Sparrow’s for self defense, which the USAF decided against.

I’d put an RAAF F-111 & crew against an F-35 any day! F-35 would be toast. Wouldn’t even need missiles. The 20mm M61 cannon w/ 2,100 rounds would rip one to shreds!

It wouldn’t be so stupid if it weren’t for the price tag. Paying $100 million US for an aircraft that doesn’t do anything very well. I have no idea why anyone thought that combat aircraft with ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ syndrome [they fail when wet] was a good idea.

The F-35 would be a loser at 25 million apiece, but a disaster at its current price.

Well no one thinks of fuel economy when designing attack aircraft, but having to launch tankers all the time is not efficient. Our 40 hour mission usually involved at least 2 and possibly 3 refuelings. They were damn expensive and wasted a lot of fuel just getting the tankers airborne and in position. With combat aircraft it is a dangerous time refueling near a combat zone.

"A person who has a cat by the tail knows a whole lot more about cats than someone who has just read about them."

Mark Twain

"There are two novels that can change a bookish 14-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

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